It was dragging me back.
I left California to survive.
Now they were sending me back to bury me.
And somewhere out there, walking free, was the man who actually killed my sister. The man whose face I’d seen in that alley. The man I’d watched Justice dap up at my own grand opening like they were old friends. The man that I now know is their cousin.
Thad.
I pressed my palm flat against my belly, feeling my baby shift and settle.
Not now,I told myself.You can’t deal with that now.
But the thought was already there. A splinter buried deep. Festering.
I was in jail for a murder I didn’t commit.
And the real killer was out there, living his life, shaking hands with my fiancé, walking free.
For now.
2
PRIME
Twelve hours.
Twelve hours since they put their hands on my woman. Twelve hours since I watched them drag her out of her own bakery in handcuffs, cameras flashing, her eyes finding mine like I could save her.
I couldn’t save her.
I sat in the driver’s seat of my, parked in the lot of the DC Central Detention Facility, staring at the building like I could see through the walls. Like if I looked hard enough, I could find her. Hold her. Tell her everything was gonna be alright.
But I couldn’t do none of that. All I could do was sit here like some lovesick nigga, close as I could get without catching a charge myself.
My phone buzzed. Justice.
“How’s Yusef?”
“He’s asleep.” Justice’s voice was tired. It was almost 6 AM—none of us had slept. “Mehar’s in the guest room down the hall from him. She’ll be here when he wakes up.”
“He say anything?”
A pause. “Nah. Not a word.”
I closed my eyes. Pinched the bridge of my nose.
Yusef had come so far. Sloane had been working with him for months—the trauma therapy, the art exercises, the trust-building. He’d started making sounds again. Started writing notes. We thought he was close to breaking through, to finally telling us what Rashid put him through during those weeks he had him. The “discipline.” The isolation. Whatever else that man did to try to reshape him into a soldier.
Then this shit happened.
Now Yusef was back to silence. Back to that hollow look in his eyes. Back to being a thirteen-year-old boy who’d seen too much and lost too much and couldn’t find the words for any of it.
“Keep me posted,” I said.
“You still at the jail?”
“Where else I’ma be?”
